Sculptors say new Adams Hall sculpture meant to be enjoyed
Susannah Elliott
September 8, 2008
Ohio University students should be accustomed by now to the conspicuous presence of the one-year-old Adams Hall on South Green, but inside the crook of the giant dormitory sits a unique outdoor sculpture that was finished just this summer.
Made of the same brick that covers the walls of Adams, “I Want to Become Architecture” features a brick path that stretches out and away from the building into a grassy area where students often play Frisbee. Just beside the intersection of the building’s sidewalk paving and the brick path is a large collection of bricks that have a sitting human form carved out of them.
Summer residents of Adams Hall were confused during the four-week-long construction of the piece. Some thought at first that the university was building an outdoor grill. However, students have since enjoyed taking turns sitting in the form and various other parts of the sculpture.
According to University Planner Pam Callahan, planning for “I Want to Become Architecture” began in 2006. A that time, the Percent for Art Committee, which consists of a community member and OU faculty and staff, chose New York artists Allan and Ellen Wexler from several finalists to create a piece of artwork for the Adams Hall space. The committee also had input from Residence Life personnel.
Adams Hall’s Auxiliary Services construction budget, which comes primarily from room-and-board fees, funded the $78,425 project.
Artist Ellen Wexler said that while the actual fabrication of the sculpture took about four weeks, the Wexlers began researching Athens and Ohio University as soon as they were chosen as finalists. Wexler said the two artists took photos and interviewed Athens-area historians, architects and students, as well as Adams Hall construction workers to decide what type of piece would be most appropriate for the space.
The married team of the Wexlers had never used brick as a material before, but were struck by the history it represents in the area and Ohio University’s rule that all campus buildings must be made of brick. Wexler said that because of the buildings’ uniformity, they thought it would be interesting to force students to look at other ways to see brick and make it forge a physical connection to the new dormitory. One interesting aspect of the project is that the artists hired masons from the Athens-area Brick-It Co. to lay the brick and help cut it into the desired shapes.
Wexler said that she and Allan realized their skills would not match up to the talent of the masons, and she noted that the men’s skills were instrumental in the process.
The idea for “I Want to Become Architecture” has been used before in Allan Wexler’s work; he has created a similar piece from sheet rock and wood. Ellen said he got the idea from his realizing that while he once thought he wanted to be an architect, he later realized that he wanted to become architecture and be physically involved with his work. The Wexlers thought this idea could be incorporated in a dormitory environment.
“Having children that recently finished college, a dormitory is the first home that they have away from their natural home, and it’s a different kind of home,” Ellen Wexler said. “My kids went off to college and came back for Thanksgiving, and my first one, I heard her call a dorm friend and say, ‘I’ll be back home Monday morning,’ and I was devastated.”
Wexler said she realized her daughter meant she would be back with her friends and her new home in the dorm, but it resonated with her.
“It’s kind of hard for kids going off and living in this strange new building, forming friends, and [the sculpture] is bringing the idea of dormitory and wanting to be inside it like a room — to be nestled in it like a wall — actually inside the wall of the dormitory and it becoming part of you,” Wexler said. “I thought that that idea was part of the fact that this was a dormitory — it’s not a science building, and it’s not the math building, but it’s the new dorm.”
Wexler encourages students to use the sculpture for sitting on or standing on — she said it is made to engage the everyday person and allow him or her to interact with it. The Wexlers had had lunch with about 10 OU students who stated that they were concerned that the art would be too conceptual or abstracted, and the Wexlers were sensitive to that worry.
Wexler gave some suggestions for different ways to enjoy the artwork, however.
“Notice the connection where our piece touches the dormitory,” she said. “It kind of steps down and cascades and grows down, in a very beautiful way, I think, from the building, and then it becomes these cubes that one can sit on. They’re not meant to be ‘chairs,’ but they are meant to be able to be sat on by people. It’s really fun where the brick cascades down from the dorm, because if you stand and look straight at it and somebody stands on each tiny little step — if you’re looking straight on where you have no sense of perspective — it looks like the person’s floating in the air.”
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